


Marking Time

by valderys



Category: Damien (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Dubious Consent, Happy Ending, M/M, PWP without Porn, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8856331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/pseuds/valderys
Summary: Damien may be taking someone's free will away but that's better than killing them, isn't it?  Isn't it?  Surely, this is a better way to control his power than the alternatives?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skitz_phenom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skitz_phenom/gifts).



_And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads_ \- Revelations 13:16

 

Damien is back in his loft, the blood that his face and body was covered in, has been washed from his flesh, like some bizarre reversal of a baptism. His wounds have healed, pretty much, certainly any that his own blood have touched are as healed as the gunshot wound in Simone's head. Damien stares into the mirror, remembering the people kneeling, as he came into his power, and he feels... Numb. But only the numbness of a covered wound, there is a roiling and churning underneath, he knows it. He feels, rather than hears, a shattering sound, and looks up into the mirror, which now has a jagged crack running across it. He raises his hand and feels the edges, running his thumb along the join, as though with idle curiosity. It stings, but he finds he likes that. It's something else to concentrate upon.

Simone has gone to hospital, Damien insisted upon it - pointlessly, he knows, as she is as physically perfect as she ever was (more so, her appendix scar is gone too, he doesn't know how he knows this, so he tries not to think about it) but she didn't want to leave him and Damien needs this time alone. He knows, somehow, that she won't ever want to leave him alone again. She is his, fundamentally, her life leant back to her, a gift and a promise both. His handmaiden. He winces and turns away from his cracked reflection.

Damien has always claimed he doesn't remember his childhood. His early years are all a blur, brought about by trauma. The accident that killed his mother. The death of his father. But is that really true? It's what he's always told everybody and he knows that he believed it once. But now? After everything he's seen? Could it be more likely that he made himself forget? Could it be that he couldn't face the truth, so he made himself put it all away for his own peace of mind. Children do, he knows that, he's read books about aberrant psychology, how the tortured mind hides from itself. Was he tortured by his memories in this way? He doesn't think so, but then it's obviously worked all too well, so how can he tell? For all that some fleeting memories have come back, there are whole swathes, years even, that have not. He tries to comfort himself with that thought. He is not sure it's working.

All for him. That is what they cry, before they die. Before his nanny leapt from the roof, before the rough rope tightened around her throat, and the glass broke from the weight of her body. And what did he feel, in that moment? He was a child, he didn't understand the agony or the ecstasy, how could he? No wonder he blocked it from his mind. But now he is a man, _just_ a man, which he has tried to cling to, except it isn't entirely true, he is that, but he is more too - he finds he can't deny it any longer. Any more than he can deny how their deaths feel to him now, those unfortunates who are drawn to him like moths to a flame, their excitement rushing deep in the chambers of his body, tightening his skin, filling his cock - he knows his pupils expand wide and dark with arousal even as they cast themselves into the abyss for him. He has come into his inheritance and Damien knows there is no denying it any more, but fuck, he wishes there were another way.

No wonder he blocked these feelings as a child, no wonder he refused to acknowledge them, put them away like broken toys. They weren't broken but Damien is. Was. Will be? But he can't afford to be so ignorant and blind any longer. He has to face it, the death he has always been surrounded by - it is his, all for him. There will only be more.

Damien wanders aimlessly through the darkened loft and stops at the light table, the photos there not quite in an order he remembers, a subtle sign of how things have been going wrong for some time. He runs his fingers across them, as he has a thousand times before, the photo paper slippery against the pads of his fingers. He stomach swoops in sudden anguished remembrance that Amani will not be there to help him make sense of these images, this future, that John Lyons has killed him, and then there is a deeper cracking noise. It's not just the mirror this time, the glass of the light table itself has a skittering, gleaming crack marring its pristine surface and Damien clenches his fists.

It is then that he notices, still full of grief and rage in equal measure, that the pictures themselves have changed, subtly, barely noticeable except to a trained eye. It's not as disturbing as the old woman who has been dogging his footsteps his whole life, it's nothing like that, not even a shadow of the horrors to come leaking out of the corners of his eye (which he is sure he has been seeing for longer than he has been prepared to admit). No, this is different, and instinctively he somehow knows it's to do with his power, with his acceptance of it - this is _his_ , in some fundamental way.

The people are marked. Oh, not all of them, not even close, but in the crowd shots, he can see it, always on a wrist, or the back of a hand, on their palm or on their foreheads. Just a faint grey shadow really, in the shape of a circle with three trailing rays, like child's depiction of the sun, but as he rests his fingertip on the mark on one young man's head, he can feel him, out there in the world. Somehow Damien knows that when he accepted his role, his fundamental purpose, in the dark, covered in blood, and when all around him people knelt down in acknowledgement - well, they were not just kneeling to him, they were also pledging themselves, their souls, just as surely as if they had put the rope around their neck and jumped. Just as certainly as if they had mouthed, it's all for you, Damien, it's all for you. And now he can see it, in the photographs, which have been his eyes for as long as he can remember. He can feel it, when he touches them, out there in the dark. Instinctively, he thinks the camera lens will do the same, show him who belongs to him, and who do not. Not all will bow, he knows that too, but enough will, more and more over time. Enough already _have_.

Damien looks at the crack in the light table, that shattered at the smallest change in his own mood, and wishes he could gain some modicum of control. Wishes he could change things, make things better - wishes he could feel ready for this. Wishes for it desperately. He has power, like a circuit connecting, they knelt and he could feel it and see it in his followers' hearts. He could be drunk on it, there's so much raw potential roaring and churning at the heart of him. There's power in sacrifice and he also knows that the deaths will come thick and fast now, unless he can limit them somehow. Simone can't slap every one of them into sense. No longer can he afford to be the passive observer to the chaos around him but instead he must harness it somehow. Or the light table will be the least of the things he will break before he is done. Damien realises he's shut his eyes as he pictures it, as he breathes slowly, and his fists are screwed up in the papers in front of him. He slowly relaxes his hands and smoothes down the photograph he clutched, he doesn't want to ruin one of the few things that connects him here in this new life, with his old.

Detective Shay stares out of the creased image. Looking out of shot, frowning as seems habitual with him, his jacket grainy with movement and distance, Damien realises it was a shot he took from the window here at the loft, one of the many days that Shay had decided to stalk him. And he realises something else - that Shay too had knelt in the muddy ground just a few hours ago and that faintly, on his outstretched wrist, there is Damian's mark.

***

Shay wipes his face, looks into the mirror above the sink, to see eyes looking back that are older than he thought possible. But he's seen some shit by now and it hasn't stopped him. He's seen some freaky shit _tonight_ even, and he's still moving, still breathing, still fucking here. And so is Patrick, and so is Jacob. And he is so pathetically, ridiculously grateful for that, he can't say, even if Patrick has taken Jacob to his brother's. No, don't think about that, he can't afford to think about that.

His mouth is sour with the taste of vomit, and so he scoops up a handful of water and ignores the rusty bathroom taint to rinse his mouth out and spit. Because he's as hard a bastard as any NYPD detective, he's paid his dues, more so than most, but he still shot someone tonight, and that is never easy, not if it's the worst scumbag in the world. That the poor girl was a civilian, a bystander, a victim even - it's like every cop's worst nightmare, what happened tonight. The fact that he wasn't even a cop, that he's handed in his badge and gun, that he's just some random murdering asshole, no better than those he hunts, that's so much worse. What was he even thinking? The fact that the freaky fucking piece of shit he's been blaming for all this saved her (somehow) is just icing on the cake. Shay doesn't think he's going mad, it's all of a piece with the hallucinations and the dogs and the crazy deathcult stuff that goes on around Damien Thorne. But the freakiest thing of all is that in his heart of hearts, where the soft parts of him are hidden - the little boy he once was, the feelings that filled him on his wedding day when he looked at Patrick and said their 'I do's - that part of him is whimpering in relief, is so fucking thankful that he's not been made a murderer of little girls. Well. Perhaps that's why it seemed like such a good idea to kneel in the mud like a fool.

Shay shakes his head just once, like an old dog, a kind of automatic attempt to shake the universe back into making some kind of sense. He doesn't know why they all knelt down like a bunch of assholes. He only knew that in that moment there was nothing else he could do, like it was an inevitability, like he was sinking down into a warm bath or collapsing into bed at the end of a long day - the fucking longest. And Damien, who he admits is easy on the eye, but who Shay doesn't even fucking _like_ , stands there, all covered in blood and stares at them, kind of faintly approving, like they're his children or, or... As though he's hungry for something. Like they're food or some such nonsense. And if that doesn't creep a person out then he'd like to know what would.

Then, in a heartbeat, or rather in the lack of a heartbeat, everything changes. Shay doubles over as the worst pain in the world suddenly carves him in two. Worse than when that mutt was chewing on his arm. He feels like his heart is being squeezed into fragments and breathing is a thing that happens to other people. He lurches back from the sink and as he clutches at his chest - a fucking cardiac arrest at his age, after everything he's seen, that's not suspicious at all - the lightbulb above him shatters into a thousand pieces, powdering glass into his hair, the floor, and plunging him into darkness.

But it seems to signal the climax of whatever the fuck is happening now, because his chest suddenly releases its crushing hold, his heart beats again like a bass drum in his ears and Shay takes a shuddering breath. He feels like he's aged a year in a matter of seconds, what a crazy fucking day. But it's not over yet, as he takes a faltering step towards the faint light of the bathroom door, despite his racing pulse. There's somewhere else he needs to be, he just knows it. He can feel it deep down inside, pulling him towards something momentous, like a fish hook in his soul.

Still, Detective Shay thinks to himself as he staggers out to where he left his car, tethers go both ways. And it's not a leash if it takes him right where he wants to go anyways.

***

Damien stares down at all the faces in his photographs for who knows how long. He realises he instinctively knows who belongs to him even if he has never seen them before. He thinks about it, but tries not to feel it, just in case he does something to them. He thinks that he can, in fact, sense where those who belong to him are, wherever they are in the world. Which should be a frightening thought but he finds fear is not his primary emotion. Excitement maybe? It idly occurs to him that he could go on TV and tell them to do anything at all for him and they'd do it. He considers the possibilities. It's the funniest thought he's had in awhile and ends up involving a fantasy about the greatest marketing campaign in the world and the stupid amount of money he could make from it - although it isn't even that funny. But it's better to think of it like a joke, than anything else - or they might do something stupid. All for you, Damien.

There's a noise then, echoing like a gunshot in the silence, and he jumps, his heart pounding, but it's only the metal door to the loft screeching open. For one glorious second, Damien hopes that it's Amani coming back, not dead after all, his friend still, who'll help him make sense of this. They'll roll a bottle of whisky backwards and forwards like they've done a dozen times before, and things won't be so bleak... But of course it's not. Ann Rutledge told him that Amani's dead, and he believes it. She's creepy and obsessed but she has never lied to him. Unless that too is a lie.

No, it's the rangy, greying form of Detective James Shay that pushes through the door and Damien feels a vicious sense of disappointment, followed by that of inevitability. If he wasn't so busy trying to push all this newfound power away, he'd have known that. He thinks about the photo earlier, how he'd crushed it, how he'd smoothed it out. How he'd probably summoned Shay without really being aware of it. Damien reaches out now with a fingertip, and brushes the edge of the print. Shay twitches but doesn't stop moving, closer, closer still, his strides a mockery of the belligerence of earlier encounters, because Damien is pretty sure he's not a danger to him. Not any more. A dog with its jaw muzzled.

The analogy sends a strange kind of frisson through him, as though the thought of restraining a dangerous animal excites something in him, all that strength leashed at his command... Well, he'd be a fool not to realise the parallels with his own situation - and to all those who have been trying to control him too, for their own ends. He remembers how he'd felt when the hounds fell upon Lyons, how he could almost feel their jaws closing around the man's flesh, almost taste the hot blood in their throats... He shakes his head once sharply, to dispel the sensations, but it's enough. Shay is very close now, but at Damien's movement he stops, looking surprised. Damien smiles, slowly. It appears he's not the only one who has not realised all the... ramifications of the situation.

They are almost eye to eye now, like they have been before, one of Shay's favourite intimidation techniques, and he's a tall man, Damien thinks, so it probably works on a lot of people. But he's not a lot of people, not any more - if he ever was. He stares into Shay's eyes and he can see the defiance there, almost hiding the hint of fear underneath - and all Damien can think greedily is mine. His to taste, his to use as he sees fit. He thinks fleetingly that normal people wouldn't be getting off on this power dynamic, wouldn't find their body raising gooseflesh, wouldn't find their lips tingling at the possibilities, but he's not normal, remember? Shay is attractive, if you like them slightly rough around the edges, and Damien finds he can acknowledge that attraction without in any way liking the man. In fact, it's probably better if he doesn't.

Shay is here because Damien inadvertently summoned him. That's the bottom line. But on the plus side, Damien thinks darkly, at least he hasn't cracked any more mirrors or other furniture. At least no-one has thrown themselves off a bridge. He may be taking someone's free will away but that's better than killing them, isn't it? Isn't it? Surely, this is a better way to control the power than the alternatives?

And then Damien remembers, because it will always come down to this in the end - Shay knelt to him. Shay had a choice and in the end, of his own free will, he chose Damien. Everything that happens now is merely consequences.

***

Damien is staring at him. And Shay might be more freaked out by that, given that he's less than a foot away, if he wasn't already freaking out about being unable to move. Well, that's not quite true. He _could_ move, he just doesn't seem to want to. He tries to convince his body that it's a good idea to step back, to say something even, but all he gets back is a busy signal, nope, happy right here thank-you-very-much. Jesus. He thinks he should be more upset about that.

There is a flutter in his belly, that he's desperately trying to not think about, as he stares into Damien's pretty-boy blue eyes. He's a married man, for fuck's sake, and he loves Patrick, and they don't like experimenting with third parties like some gay couples he knows. It makes it way too complicated, he knows that, so he has no business feeling a flutter like this, even if he was only window shopping, looking but no touching, _which he wasn't even doing_. But there's still something there, and the part of his brain that isn't in some kind of screaming denial, is whispering that Patrick's gone to his brother's and he's taken Jacob, and what's that going to mean. In the long term. For their family.

In the short term, he's still staring at Damien, hating his mental doubts, but appreciating the view on a physical level at least. He's always liked broad shoulders, a square jaw, confidence, and attitude. He's always liked a challenge, and fuck, but Damien has been that, all freaky shit aside. So he can't help his sharp inhale, when Damien leans forward a bare couple of inches and takes his hand, lifting it up between them. Just the touch of his fingers, broad and blunt, sends electricity surging through his body, spearing his belly, and rising his prick like the kid he hasn't been for decades. And that's just the touch of his _fingers_. Fuck.

But Damien isn't finished. Of course, he isn't. Shay is still fighting his rebellious body, the body that seems like it's already given in, when Damien turns his hand over, so the palm is upwards and then looks down, as though he's studying it. He doesn't know what he sees, it's just a hand, with the usual nicks and scars and marks of time. But Damien stares at it as though it holds the secrets of the universe. Shay has only hazily grasped that however because Damien is continuing to manipulate Shay's hand, casually stroking it, turning it this way and that and it's all that he can do to hold on to himself through a simmering wave of unwilling lust.

Then Damien does something even more unexpected, and it's not even the rough fumbling for Shay's belt which he more than half expects, and certainly dreads and desires by this point with an equal absurd longing. No, he raises Shay's hand higher still and then he bends his head and licks at his palm. It's such a comparatively innocent gesture, compared to where his mind has been going, and yet it's wet and warm, and the scent of Damien's hair is in Shay's nostrils, the nape of his neck vulnerable and bent in front of _him_. Damien's tongue is soft and hot on his flesh, lapping at his fingers now, and somehow more obscene than the hardest porn, that he barely blinks at in real life when Patrick decides they should spice things up. There's something about Damien and in this he's freaky as fuck too and even as Shay arches his back in a soundless cry and comes in his fucking pants like a teenager, he marvels at it, in ecstasy and despair.

What is Damien, really? Why can't he let this go? He might have lost his fucking job, his career, now his marriage for this obsession. Is there anything left for him to lose?

***

There is a pit inside him aching to be filled. He could drink the seas dry and it wouldn't be enough. He could eat the world and still be hungry. But as Damien greedily tastes his mark on his worshiper, it's like connecting an electrical circuit, a livewire that feeds directly into that restless, roiling chaos at the heart of him. And it tastes like relief, because he hasn't killed anyone, no-one's broken body is decorating the sidewalk, no blood is pooling in yet another escalator - this kind of sacrifice, so direct, so immediate, offered up willingly but not out of some kind of false love, this he can enjoy. This he can revel in. 

He sucks the final dregs of power lazily in a final swirl of his tongue at the base of Shay's index finger. And then he raises his head. Shay is far too close but Damien can hardly blame him for that. His eyes are hazy. Shay is looking dazed, almost drugged, and Damien finds that despite all the implications, he is glad. He doesn't want anyone to suffer, not even Shay. In fact, he finds a certain indulgent magnanimity come over him, a fondness even, because in this he is Damien's first. That matters somehow. It deserves acknowledgement.

Go, he thinks, finally, their connection such that he doesn't need to speak to know that Shay hears him. Go back to your family, James. Go back to your job, your life. It will all fall into place for you.

He has decided and it will be so.

Shay stumbles away and moves to the door. He doesn't look sure of anything, his own feet or Damien's words. He looks barely able to stand. Damien feels a curl of smugness in his belly. Shay looks back, one last time, and Damien feels an urge to pull him back, to drink from him again. And again. He suppresses it. There are many, many more followers out there. He can afford to be generous to this one man.

He thinks Simone would be proud of him.

Until the next time.


End file.
